- This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- Next on WEDU, a court filing reveals how the Proud Boys on January 6th, led by a South Florida resident, planned to take over government buildings.

The Tampa lawyer who sued big tobacco and won, has some thoughts about curbing mass shootings.

The state government puts up roadblocks to COVID 19 vaccines for kids, and the governor's Stop Woke Act is slated to go to court.

All coming up next on "Florida This Week".

(dramatic music) Welcome back, after the recent deadly shooting massacres in the country, nationally prominent Tampa attorney, Steve Yerrid, who successfully led Florida's effort to sue big tobacco, wrote a letter to the Tampa Bay Times, in which he said regarding the mass shootings, doing nothing would represent a tortured view of our nation's values and true American grit.

If we cannot move ourselves to act now after the murder of those innocents and their teachers, may God have mercy upon us.

Steve is the author of the book "When Justice Prevails", and Steve Yerrid welcome to "Florida This Week".

Great to see you.

- Always good seeing you, my friend, always good seeing you.

- You believe that people's fundamental rights are being violated when they're shot.

You're a second amendment believer, but you believe that there's a more fundamental right in our country.

And that's the right to life, Liberty and happiness.

- Right.

I think Rob, you know, any constitutional right, I'm a gun owner, any constitutional right, has to be founded in good faith.

I think people have a good faith belief that they're entitled as Americans to gun ownership, and gun usage.

I have no problem with that.

I think people always need to also understand, like the first amendment gives us free speech.

It doesn't mean you can yell fire in a crowded theater.

What it means is you have a right, but it's gotta be taken into context of what's good for society.

What's not good for society, is this non-action on things we should be doing something about.

When you see 9 and 10 year olds in Texas being massacred, and massacre is the right word.

There's a reason the media doesn't show the pictures.

They're so gross, they would repulse even a medical examiner.

Some of those kids were shot multiple times with an assault rifle.

A rifle that's meant to just absolutely maim, and dismember the body.

So these young children shot multiple times, they had to use DNA to identify 'em.

But people said, well, you gotta take the guns away.

Take the assault weapons away.

My dear friend, one of my dear friends and colleagues, in the inner circle recently sued Bushmaster, and they settled the case before it got to trial.

But the basic premise on that one was assault weapons are meant to be weapons of war.

They have no place in society.

Well, one can argue that they do have a place, but I like the better argument.

Why not do something?

Florida has tried to do it.

We were controlled too long by the gun lobby, controlled way too long by silence and inaction, they recently did take in Tallahassee, some measures that enhanced background checks.

They did a couple of other things.

They were significant, but the longer the sting of the massacres we've had here in Florida, the longer that period lasts, the greater the tendency is to revert back to this massive.. We have 400 million guns in this country, and law abiding citizens usually use the guns.

- Okay, so what legislation should be passed?

- The legislation should start, in my humble opinion...

When I was at Georgetown law school, I worked in the Senate, and there we used to measure accomplishments by action.

It seems in this congressional era, we measure success by inaction.

You know, the less they can do, or the more they can stop doing the better it is.

That's not achievement.

That's not accomplishment.

So here's what I think.

I think that there's some basics, or they've got a dialogue for the first time.

They actually may pass a bipartisan bill.

Background checks, enhance them.

People that are mentally ill need treatment.

They need to be identified.

It has to be enhanced, the background checks, I would suggest a more thorough enhancement of the background checks for those kids, 18 and 21.

Yeah, they can drink at 18 in a lot of states, but they can't vote.

I mean, they can vote or they can't drink, but they can all go serve the country and get killed at 18.

So I think it's kind of a Twilight Zone.

So let's look at that, and enhance the background checks for those youngsters that may be a little unstable, a little quick tempered.

- Federal law prohibits most lawsuits against gun manufacturers and gun dealers.

- I wonder why that is?

- Now you're one of the best trial lawyers in the country.

Do you think that victims should be able to sue gun manufacture manufacturers or gun dealers?

- The conditional answer to that is yes, because they're like any breed of cat.

There are always people that don't abide by acceptable standards of conduct.

So the answer is always, yes, you should be able to sue most people if your rights and the rights of society are being violated.

Most gun manufacturers probably don't merit a lawsuit, because most don't violate fundamental principles of fairness, or protection of our society.

But there are always circumstances.

One would be in Connecticut, where they identified Bushmaster, they made assault weapons for use of war.

Those assault weapons are, there's a lot of commonality.

It seems like, you know, in Texas that governor, very misguided in my opinion, but that governor said, oh, well, initially he was shot.

This massacre occurred with a handgun.

Of course it didn't occur with a handgun.

The common denominator has been these assault weapons.

So let's take off that.

Well, we're not gonna take the assault weapons away.

Okay, how about the limitation on the munitions on the clip?

And do you need 50 shots to kill a hog?

I don't think so.

So take some solace there and do something, limit the clips.

If you don't eliminate the guns, the background checks, I've already mentioned.

The other thing you've got violent criminals, that have been identified in Florida, kudos to Florida, as being of special interest in gun control.

Okay, so if somebody's got a history of violence, we've got laws in place that are gonna make those people a little bit more suspect before we issue guns.

- But I'm still interested in that, you're one of the top lawyers in the country.

Is it fair that gun manufacturers get this special treatment that no other company gets, that is you can't sue a gun manufacturer in most cases, unless you market to children, and somehow a killer uses that marketing as a inclination to kill.

We have 30 seconds.

- Let me suggest this.

When I wrote that book, "When Justice Prevails", I put when on it, because too often, the well moneyed and the powerful get justice, the innocent are often left without truth or justice.

So the answer is the powerful gun lobby has been able to accomplish that, and that is exactly the problem.

When the convicts are in charge of the prison, guess what happens?

Not good things.

- Steve Yerrid always great to see you.

Thank you for coming by.

- Let do something though, huh?

- Okay, Steve Yerrid, thanks a lot.

- Thank you very much.

- Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Joining us now on our panel this week, Rosemary Goudreau O'Hara is the former editorial page editor for the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Eric Deggans is the TV critic for National Public Radio.

And Diane Roberts is a writer for the Florida Phoenix and a professor at Florida State University.

So great to see all of you, wonderful.

Well, according to an FBI affidavit made public by the January 6th Committee this week, a government informant says that members of the far right militant group, the Proud Boys attending the rally at the U.S. Capital, say they would've killed Vice President Mike Pence, if given the chance.

Outside the Capital on January 6th, the mob expressed anger toward the VP.

- Mike Pence has betrayed the United States of America.

(crowd booing) - Mike Pence has betrayed this President, and he has betrayed the people of the United States.

And we will never, ever forget.

- The rioters at the U.S. Capital almost had the chance to capture Pence, coming within 40 feet of the Vice President, as he fled to safety.

We're also finding out more about the far right Proud Boys role in the insurrection.

A Miami resident who is facing seditious conspiracy charges for his role in the January 6th insurrection, received a memo before the insurrection detailing plans to occupy congressional office buildings, in order to protest the counting of electoral votes from the 2020 presidential election.

According to CBS news, the memo was sent to Proud Boys leader, Enrique Tarrio, and headlined "1776 Returns".

The plan outlined a goal to maintain control over several crucial government buildings in the DC area, while the occupiers presented a list of demands.

The demands were to include free and fair elections, liberty or death, and no Trump, no America.

According to the memo, participants were to demand a new election be conducted on January 20th, 2021, monitored by the National Guard.

Another line says Rand Paul and Ron DeSantis, we the people love you.

During the assault on the Capital, Tarrio posted a message that said revolutionaries are now at the Rayburn Office Building, which the indictment notes was mentioned as a takeover target in the 1776 plan.

Rosemary, over and over again every week, there's a new story about somebody from Florida deeply involved in the attempted insurrection, and this guy Tarrio lives in Miami, Proud Boys leader at the heart of the attack, and the threats against the Vice President.

- Right, no this is really scary stuff.

You know, plans to use trucks to block intersections, to pull fire alarms across the city, to infiltrate and occupy the Supreme Court, the House and Senate Office Buildings, even CNN, and a noose to hang the Vice President.

How can anybody look at this stuff, and this evidence and continue to downplay it?

This was not some normal tourist visit.

This was an attempt to overturn the election, and Tarrio and Biggs, you know, are both from, another Floridian.

91 Floridians have been charged with crimes for storming the Capital, more than any other state, and where's Florida's political leadership in dealing with this.

I mean this week, the governor's all outraged about Dallas parents taking their little kids to a noontime drag show, and now he wants to make it a crime here, doing that, make it a crime here.

Where is he in talking about the crimes that were committed against our country, and against the constitution on January 6th?

- Eric, if these hearings are gonna have any impact, a lot of people have to watch 'em, you're a TV critic.

Tell me about, how many people are watching these hearings.

And do you think that that new people that aren't already interested in the topic are watching?

- Well, first of all, I would suggest that focusing on linear ratings is a little old school.

So, but even in that metric, these hearings have gotten a fair amount of attention.

They did 20 million viewers in prime time.

And then there's a sense that the aggregate number has dropped a lot, maybe, you know, 10 million for Monday.

I think I saw a figure of 10 or 12 million for Monday's hearings.

Now there, you can't really compare the numbers, because there's the pool of potential viewers is much smaller in daytime.

And there were fewer channels carrying the hearings continuously than they were on the Thursday that they debuted in prime time.

But what you can say is that there's significant public interest.

And what's important is the way that the information from these hearings gets transmitted to the general public, because journalists do stories, and late night hosts crack jokes, and people create memes, and other messages on social media that go out, and let people know what happened.

YouTube figures do their own analyses of what happened and word about the important, you know, touchstones the big, you know, revelatory moments.

That's what gets out to the people.

And it's interesting to me, because a fair amount of what is being revealed during these hearings was also detailed in a lot of the books that came out about the last year of the Trump presidency, including Michael Wolf's book "Landslide", including "I Alone Can Fix It" by Washington Post reporters.

And the book that Bob Woodward did with Robert Costa.

So this, some of this information was already out there, but people weren't aware of it, because they didn't necessarily read those books.

So they didn't read reviews of the books, or press coverage of the books.

So now having these hearings on national television really galvanizes people's attention, and they're able to absorb the information in ways that they weren't , when it was made available in other venues.

- Diane, the excuse though for the media that's not carrying the hearings, is that this is a rehash of what we already know.

You know based on what we've learned from these hearings, and indeed the books that Eric just mentioned, is this stuff that we knew a year ago?

- No, it isn't.

This is the idea that this was indeed a conspiracy is new to a lot of people.

Maybe people suspected it, some people suspected that it was a conspiracy.

And now we seem to see a level of planning, and a level of knowledge.

Trump knew that what he wanted Mike Pence to do was illegal.

That it wouldn't work.

I mean, the crackpot lawyer that he had, John Eastman said, well, you know, we'll lose in the Supreme Court, and this is not something Al Gore should have done, or Kamala Harris should do in 2024, but we should do it.

We should let the Vice President choose the President.

And here in Florida, astonishingly the Governor's reaction to the fact that there was an attempted coup, is why are we beating a dead horse?

And honestly, I think this horse has got a lot of life left in him, and he's getting up and kicking Republicans in the backside.

So I'm just a bit appalled.

I'm not shocked, but appalled at the governor's response.

And maybe he should look to in a way his own house.

We now know that there are members of the Proud Boys on the Miami-Dade Republican executive.

That's a good look, right?

White nationalists on the executive of a gigantic and important and well off political committee in.

- And they're pretty active in the Sarasota school board races right now.

Just a real quick question, Rosemary.

The governor has been asked over and over again, does he think that that Joe Biden won the election, and he hasn't answered that question directly.

What does that say?

- Well, it doesn't, it's not the kind of leadership that you would expect from somebody.

You know, the problem we face in our country right now is that nobody trusts institutions.

They don't trust government.

They don't trust business.

They don't trust universities.

They don't trust philanthropy and non-profits.

And he's in a position that he could help, you know, make clear that yes, the election was real, and the president won, and let's put that dead horse behind us, and move on to 2024 when he wants to run.

- All right.

Well this week, Governor DeSantis drew a line against the state providing COVID-19 vaccines to young children saying Florida will not provide state programs to administer vaccinations for toddlers, and infants.

This week, the Food and Drug Administration gave approval to allow two COVID vaccines to be administered to children under the age of five.

The FDA says both vaccines appear to be safe and effective for children, as young as six months.

The governor disagrees with the FDA.

He says that COVID-19 vaccines have not gone through enough testing, or clinical trials to determine that they are effective, and added that kids are least likely to suffer serious health consequences from COVID.

In March, the DeSantis administration's top medical official, Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo, recommended not vaccinating healthy children.

Eric there's some confusion at the end of the week, because there were news reports saying that the governor has reversed himself on this issue, and is okay with allowing the vaccines to get to the kids.

But the White House says that that's not true.

And I'm not stating this clearly, but there is some confusion about whether or not the governor is standing in the way of vaccines getting to kids.

- Yeah, yeah.

The governor who says, he's trying to make this simpler, right.

In fact, it's incredibly complicated, and it all seems to rest on how do healthcare facilities actually get the vaccines that they can then pass on that are approved for use for very young children.

The White House has been saying that up until this point, you know, private and non-state run healthcare facilities were not able to order the vaccines for very young children, and now they are.

And they seem to be implying that they're able to do that now, because something has changed in terms of state policy, DeSantis' spokesperson has said that that's not true, that the governor has never intended to bar non-state run facilities from ordering the vaccines.

And it doesn't seem as if the Florida Department of Health or state run facilities are going to be ordering those vaccines.

Ultimately, what seems to be troubling here is, you know, we've seen DeSantis do other things that he says is aimed at giving parents more choice.

And here he seems to be giving parents less choice.

You know, if it it's up to the parent to decide whether or not their child should get vaccinated, I don't understand why the governor is involved in that decision.

If health experts have said that the vaccine is approved for use with young people, I don't.

And it, you know, we see that Florida is the only state that didn't order stockpiles of this approved vaccine for very young children, in advance.

He's narrowing parent's choice based on his own outlook on this issue.

And frankly, I think based on his judgment of how it affects his political fortunes.

And so once again, people in Florida are finding their choices limited, or changed based on what's good for him as a politician, as opposed to what might make sense, in terms of offering choice to Floridians.

- And we're almost out of time, but Rosemary, the governor's top health official, Dr. La Dapo, is not convinced that vaccines are beneficial for kids.

- Right.

You know, this whole thing, they said they didn't wanna get this distribution channel because it was convoluted.

They've only made it more convoluted.

And the Surgeon General's speaking out against vaccines is undermining, not just the COVID vaccine, but there is in this distrust, now people, more and more people don't trust the measles, and mumps, and rubella vaccines.

And he has a duty to help promote public health, and prevent the spread of disease.

And he hasn't met the challenge.

- All right, well, governor Ron DeSantis' Stop Woke Act is facing its first federal court test this Tuesday, after being celebrated by conservatives across the country.

The law prohibits workplace training or school instruction that teaches that individuals are inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously, and that people are privileged or oppressed based on race, gender, or national origin, or that a person bears personal responsibility for, and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress, over actions committed in the past by members of the same race, gender, or national origin.

The law says such trainings or lessons amount to discrimination.

Among the teachings to be outlawed Critical Race Theory.

The Stop Woke Act exposes schools and companies to lawsuits, if they're in violation.

The act also places new limits on tenure for Florida's professors.

While the governor says he is motivated to stop indoctrination by the far left, opponents of the law say it suppresses free speech.

The lawsuit is being challenged in federal court in Tallahassee.

Plaintiffs include several high school teachers, and a professor from the University of Central Florida.

And Diane, the governor says he's against indoctrination.

The free speech advocates say this limits free speech.

What do you say?

- It limits free speech.

It's an attack on many things that aren't even happening.

Nobody teaches Critical Race Theory, except maybe in graduate school.

If you asked any of these state officials, they wouldn't be able to tell you what Critical Race Theory is.

They should be able to, but they don't.

They have no idea.

This is just another way to clamp down on what DeSantis sees as the enemy.

And the enemy is knowledge.

The enemy is education.

And God forbid that we have free speech and free thought.

I thought Florida was supposed to be the freedom state.

And it is unless you are in education, a student or a professor.

He's trying to limit speech to the point where people like me and my colleagues, self censor, it's already happening.

People are frightened to teach the history of slavery.

They're frightened to talk about what actually goes on in America, and went on in America in the past.

- All right, Eric, we have 30 seconds.

What would you say?

- I would say that he is trying to intimidate teachers out of teaching actual history, because we know what actually happened in Florida.

But beyond that, it's another decision aimed at improving his political position, regardless of how it affects Floridians.

We will have a lot of students who won't learn history, and we have a lot of teachers who will be intimidated.

And this is also that he can turn to his base, and say, look what I did for you.

Vote for me for Governor and send me to the White House.

- Well, before we go, what other news story should we be paying attention to?

Diane, let's start with you.

Your other big story of the week.

- Well, this is an ongoing big story, and it was a good piece in the Florida Phoenix, by my colleague, Craig Pitman, about how, while the state has a resiliency office, we are not doing anything to combat the problems we have such as, oh, I don't know, toxic algae, climate change.

We're in a climate crisis.

We have warming water.

We have salt water incursions and warming weather.

It's a hundred in Tallahassee today means warming soil.

Warming soil, we can't grow stuff.

It is a disaster that's rolling along.

And our state government does nothing about it.

- All right, Eric, your other big story.

- My other big story of course, is the hearings that we're seeing.

The congressional hearings focused on what happened on the January 6th attack on the Capital Building.

We are learning fresh details about how close Mike Pence came to almost being seized by the crowd, and perhaps being assaulted or even killed.

We're learning fresh details about the planning that some groups indulged, in order to be ready for that moment.

And in order to take the Capital Building.

And we're learning a lot more about officials surrounding the President, and what they told him, and what he knew, even as the rioters had broken into the Capital Building.

And in fact, you know, and we've had it confirmed.

We knew this before, but we had it confirmed that, you know, as that was happening, and the president and the vice president's life was presumably in danger, the president didn't call him, didn't call him.

- Yeah.

Rosemary, you got the big story.

- Well, while government, my state government's, not doing much to address climate change.

There was big news outta the private sector this week.

Florida Power and Light, which powers half of Florida, announced that by 2045, it would be burning no more fossil fuels.

This is different than other utility companies, that are doing net zero, where they'll buy credits or plant trees.

But while they'll still emit, FPL says no fossil fuels by 2045.

To get there, they're going to put hundreds of millions of solar panels across the state.

In the end, they said 1% of Florida's landmass, will be covered by solar panels.

It's a big deal and FPL deserves credit.

- All right, well, thank you all for great show.

And thank you for joining us.

Send us your comments@ftwwedu.org, "Florida This Week" is now available as a podcast.

You can find it on our website wedu.org, and from all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend, Happy Father's Day, Happy Juneteenth, and go Lightning.

(dynamic music) - [Announcer] "Florida This Week" is a production of WEDU, who is solely responsible for its content.